


Butterfly Knife

by inlovewithnight



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Ballet, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 18:52:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3821074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rosa was a dancer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Butterfly Knife

**Author's Note:**

  * For [likebrightness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/likebrightness/gifts).



When Rosa was eleven, Señora Delgado presented her with her first pair of pointe shoes. Ballet had been part of her routine for five years, her days shaped around the hours spent in the Delgados’ basement, where Sra. had her studio. One mirrored wall, a barre, a wooden floor that they all treated with breathless respect and never, ever stepped on in street shoes for fear of death or worse.

Worse, of course, would be Sra. Delgado’s disappointment.

The pointe shoes were pink, much to Rosa’s annoyance. The only thing she hated about ballet was the endless pink. She wore black leotards over black or white tights. She scuffed and stepped on her slippers to dull the pink satin into muddy gray.

When she saw the pointe shoes, her mouth twitched, but her irritation at the color couldn’t match her excitement. “Finally,” she said. She even let her delight show in her voice. Sra. would be able to tell anyway.

“You’ve earned it,” Sra. said, nodding approvingly. “Today you’ll do class as usual, in your slippers, but stay after and I’ll show you how to break these in.”

Rosa had seen the older girls work on their shoes, using all the little tools of the trade tucked away in their dance kits: needles, lighters, knives. Rosa wanted to carry her knife and lighter in her pocket, and the needles on her sleeve. Real badass ballet.

“Thank you, Senora,” she said, taking the shoes and holding them close. “I won’t let you down.”

**

At her last lesson in the old basement, the Sra. gave her another pair of pointe shoes, pristine in their box. The satin, ribbons and all, was black.

“Custom-made,” Sra. said, tapping her fingernails against the box. “Especially for you, chica. You’ve done very well. I’m very proud.”

If Rosa was going to waver for anyone, it would be Sra. Delgado, but she wasn’t. “Thank you.”

“Keep me posted on how things ago. Come back and visit when you can. I want to see what you’re learning, and keep an eye on your form.”

“I will. Don’t worry.” Rosa turned in a slow circle, looking around the studio. The posters on the walls, the worn surface of the barre, their shared reflection in the mirror. “I’ll stay in touch.”

She would. She really meant it. There was a lot of stuff she wouldn’t talk about, ever, but not saying stuff to Sra. Delgado meant more than not saying it to anyone else.

**

The ballet academy is not much like Sra. Delgado’s basement. Rosa arrives ready to fight, assuming she’ll have to fight through every class to get what she deserves. That isn’t solos, or a prime placement, or even the most attention; it’s just being recognized for what she _does_ do right. Maybe she’ll end up being the worst dancer there. It’s not likely, but maybe. As long as they give her credit for what she is doing right, in between being the worst, they’ll all get along just fine.

She stakes out her space early on, using hard eye contact to make sure everyone gets the message that _this_ locker and _that_ arms-length-wide section of floor is _hers_ , and if they decide to cross over the invisible line, they’re going to have to fight about it. It works on all the other first-years. A few older dancers roll their eyes and smirk and talk loudly about bringing new girls down a peg. Rosa can’t wait. If they want to fight her, she’s happy to find out which one of them will walk away with hair and face intact.

On the fifth day, she’s sitting in her mentally marked-off corner of the practice room, cutting electrical tape off the roll with her pocket knife to prep her shoes the way she likes them. A pair of feet in street shoes enter her field of vision, and a shadow falls over her work. She sets her jaw and looks up, ready to rip someone a new one.

The girl looking down on her is smiling, though, and not territorial smiling, but… happy smiling. She’s one of the few other girls in the class who isn’t blonde and tiny and white. The only black girl, actually. Rosa noticed her the first day, but hasn’t looked at her directly any more than she has any of the others. They’re all just part of the scenery, not part of Rosa’s dance at all.

“Rosa Diaz?”

Rosa brushes a stray curl off her face. “Who wants to know?”

“You don’t remember me?” The girl smiles _more_. “I guess it’s been a long time, we moved away when I was nine. Alicia Ramirez. I was in Sra. Delgado’s class, too.”

The words don’t make any sense for a moment. Rosa’s divided this classroom so far away from Sra. Delgado’s in her mind that it takes an actual effort to connect them. When she finally says, “Wow. Um. Yeah, I remember you,” it sounds like at least half a lie.

Alicia keeps grinning, though. “You look great! And, like, the same, kind of. I mean, I recognized you. Black tights and brought a butterfly knife to ballet class, that’s totally Rosa Diaz.”

“Apparently if I don’t have pink tights and my hair in a bun by Monday, there’s gonna be consequences.” Rosa rolls her eyes. “I’d like to see them try.”

“You haven’t changed at all.” Alicia drops her bag on the floor. “Mind if I sit?”

“Yeah, go ahead.” Rosa moves her bag over to make room. She goes back to cutting and taping, watching Alicia from the corner of her eye. “What brought you back to New York?”

Alicia laughs a little and pulls her own shoes out of her bag. They’re a broken-in pair, already just the way she likes them. Rosa feels a quick flicker of disappointment; she would’ve liked to see how Alicia preps her shoes. Maybe she could’ve offered some of her supplies, to help. It would’ve given them something to talk about.

She smashes down hard on the thought. It’s a _weird_ thought. She doesn’t need to see how Alicia preps her shoes, that doesn’t mean anything. And Alicia has her own kit to get her shoes ready, anyway. They all do. It’s a personal thing.

“This place,” Alicia says, and it takes Rosa a beat to realize she’s answering the question. “I got in, so I came back. Childhood dream achieved.”

“Yeah. Me too. I mean, I never left. But…” Rosa wants to punch herself in the face. She clears her throat, swallows, and looks down at her shoes. “Childhood dream, or whatever.”

“It’s awesome.”

Rosa nods, her brain suddenly empty of words. It happens sometimes, like she just… runs out of things to say. It’s stupid.

The classroom door swings open and Madame Veron walks in. That means they have like a minute and a half before she’ll call class to order, and Rosa’s shoes still aren’t done.

Shit.

**

Rosa and Alicia kiss for the first time outside this little empanada shop three blocks from the Academy. Everyone else in their classes would be horrified if they knew that the two of them were eating empanadas, way more horrified than about the kissing. Empanadas had carbs and fat in them and had been _fried_. Actual devil food. Kissing was nothing next to that.

Kissing Alicia makes Rosa feel warm and full, like her skin was too tight. Not the same warm and full as the empanadas, but just as good, just as much the sense of something she wanted just for herself, for always. Something that belonged in her life.

She doesn’t _say_ any of that, of course. That would be dumb. But she feels it, a lot, and she wants to kiss Alicia over and over again, so she does. She kisses her until Alicia laughs and takes her hand and walks her back to the dorms, where they can kiss without guys hollering at them from passing cars or people glaring at them for taking up a chunk of sidewalk.

It’s the best day Rosa’s had since she got to the Academy. Madame Veron nodded at her in approval twice in class, and she’s going to kiss Alicia forever.

**

Word goes around the school pretty fast. Neither Rosa nor Alicia sees any reason to hide anything. They hold hands, they kiss in the hallways, they slap each other on the ass in praise after a really class.

Rosa already knows what she likes from boys; now she learns what she likes from girls, and it’s not all that different. Cute butt, soft mouth, long fingers with nice bony knuckles and confidence in how to use them. With guys she wants a fat dick, with girls she wants boobs big enough to hold on to but not so big she could suffocate in them. It’s good to know what she wants so she has a checklist to use on people she meets in the future.

Not that she’s planning to need to ever meet anyone other than Alicia. But just in case.

They don’t make plans for the future, because that’s something old people do and they’re young and awesome. They make out and mess around and have sex and dance every day.

Rosa likes to live in the moment, and this moment is great. It’s everything she wants.

If she asked her mother, she would be informed that that’s not the way the world works. But she doesn’t ask her mother things, because that’s stupid and old-person, too.

**

It’s dumb how such a little thing can ruin everything. All that happens is Alicia lands wrong in class. Just a little bit wrong. Just, like… an inch off. If that.

Her ankle snaps and pops, she curses a lot and has to hobble downstairs and take a cab to the hospital to have it looked at, because even Madame Veron isn’t willing to say to just walk this one off.

Rosa stays at school, because Alicia tells her not to worry about it. She calls her between classes, but Alicia’s phone is off, every time.

Concentrating on anything in class is impossible; the day passes in a blur. Rosa wants to smash the floor in the studio where it happened, wants to tear the barre off the wall and shatter the mirror. Dancing doesn’t help, and violence is the only other thing that ever makes her feel better when she’s scared and pissed off like this.

If she trashes the school they’ll call the cops, though, and if she’s down at the precinct she won’t get to see Alicia when she gets back. She grits her teeth through class instead, keeping her butterfly knife in her hand as much as she can, flipping it open and closed and focusing on the comfort of the clicks it makes.

As soon as her last class is over, she hurries back to Alicia’s room and lets herself in. She waits on the bed, alternating between doing slow stretches and staring at the wall, legs folded up under herself and fists clenched.

She’s been waiting for two hours by the time the door swings open and Alicia hobbles inside, crutches under her arms. “Hey. Didn’t know if you’d be here.”

“Where the fuck else would I go?” Rosa scrambles off the bed. “Jesus. What did they say?”

“I blew a tendon.” Alicia smiles, but it’s wobbly and unsure. “I blew a tendon pretty bad.”

“I don’t think there’s a good way to do that.” Rosa helps her to the bed and props the crutches against the wall. “They gave you painkillers?”

“They gave me lots of painkillers. I took a cab back.” Alicia stretches out on her back, staring up at the ceiling. Her ankle is wrapped up tight, the bandages going halfway to her knee. “Let’s not talk about it.”

“It’ll get better, right? You’ll be able to dance.”

“Let’s really not talk about it.”

“Alicia—”

She lifts her head and looks at Rosa. “Babe. Don’t.”

Rosa bites down on everything else she wants to say and climbs on the bed with her. “You need any water or anything?”

“I need you to kiss me a lot.” Alicia reaches for her, tugging her in close. “Kiss me and grab my tits and feel me up a little, and maybe get your fingers in my pussy. I’m high as fuck and I want to enjoy it.”

“I should make you share your pills.” Rosa slides her hands up under Alicia’s shirt, finding the catch of her bra and releasing it so she can get her hands skin to skin on Alicia’s breasts. Alicia likes teasing, not pinching; sucking, not biting. Rosa likes the opposite on both counts, but right now isn’t about her. It’s all for her girl.

Or so she thinks, but after she’s gotten Alicia off and sucked her fingers clean, Alicia tangles her fingers in Rosa’s shirt and tugs at her. “C’mon up here.”

“Up where?”

“Sit on my fucking face, Diaz, god. I can’t go to you, you’ve gotta come to me.”

“You’re literally injured. Just chill, you can do me another time.”

Alicia shakes her head, her hand twisting in Rosa’s shirt. “I don’t want to wait for another time. I want to taste you now.”

There’s enough desperation in her voice for Rosa to realize that tonight is not the time to talk about the future. Live in the moment or don’t do anything at all. She makes her way up Alicia’s body walking on her knees, then pushes her tights and panties down and settles herself down carefully, braced on her hands. It leaves her looking down at the top of Alicia’s head, when she’d rather see her face, but the mechanics of the thing are what they are.

They don’t really believe in saying I love you. It’s not their thing. But she thinks it, really hard, and she knows Alicia is thinking it too.

**

Rosa understands why the doctors think they’re giving good news when they tell Alicia that she’ll only need one surgery, and that she’ll be able to walk as good as new when it’s over. Yeah, that’s better than some of the alternatives.

But she’ll never be able to dance again. Or, well. She’ll never dance _well enough_ to stay at the Academy. And as far as Rosa’s concerned, that’s the same as not being able to dance at all.

Alicia packs her stuff up carefully, never quite looking Rosa in the eye. “It’s okay. I mean, I care about other things. I wasn’t sure dancing was going to work as a _career_ for me anyway, you know? Companies want Barbie dolls, not you and me.”

“That’s bullshit.” Rosa crossed her arms tighter across her chest, watching bits and pieces of Alicia’s life vanish into her suitcase.

“I’m not saying _you_ won’t make it. You’re so fucking stubborn you’ll _make_ them take you.” Alicia stopped for a moment, rubbing her forehead. “I’ll finish school and go to college and be a teacher, probably. Everybody always needs teachers.”

“A teacher?” Rosa can’t picture it. She doesn’t want to picture it. “But then you’ll have to deal with kids.”

“I like kids.” Now Alicia glances up, smiling faintly at Rosa’s expression. “You didn’t know that?”

“No.” So that’s what this is going to be: Alicia pointing out all the things Rosa doesn’t know, like that’s going to make it easier to lose her.

“Well, I do. I like kids. I think I’ll be a good teacher.” She folds another shirt and puts it in place. “What did you want to do other than ballet?”

“I don’t know.” Her childhood ambitions were always a weird mishmash of wild ideas like fighter pilot and stuff she saw around the neighborhood. “Drive a cab like my uncle Diego.”

Alicia snorts. “You would hate being a cab driver. You’ve gotta do something that lets you move around. Or fight people.”

“Not a lot of jobs like that.”

Alicia closes the case and does up the zipper. “I have confidence in you.”

They’re both silent for a moment, standing with their eyes averted, Rosa’s hands shoved in her pockets and Alicia’s gripping the handle of the suitcase.

“Are we going to try the long-distance thing?” Rosa asks.

Alicia takes a deep breath. “I don’t think so.”

It’s not really a memorable ending, which pisses Rosa off, because she knows she’ll never forget it.

**

Less than forty-eight hours later, one of the Barbies makes some joke about Alicia leaving to go back to the ghetto. She probably didn’t even realize that Rosa was standing behind her. Too bad for her.

Rosa’s very proud of the fact that the pirouette she does to carry herself into kicking the Barbie right in the head has perfect form. It’s a pirouette that Madame Veron could be proud of. Not so much for the punch to Barbie’s kidney, or the sequence of moves required to tangle her fist in her hair and throw her down a flight of stairs.

So she’s expelled from the Academy. All of her cab-driving dreams are about to come true.

**

“It is a universal truth,” Peralta says loudly, standing in the middle of the briefing room with his hands on his hips, “that you never forget your first love.”

“Oh, here we go.” Santiago rolls her eyes, and Rosa knows this is going to turn into another weird round of making fun of Peralta to his face and obsessing over figuring out his secrets behind his back. She doesn’t really care if that’s what they want to do, at this point. They’re going to end up together with like fifteen babies. It’s going to be cute and disgusting. They should put it off for as long as possible with their weird games.

“It’s true! Tell me if I’m wrong. Can anyone here say that I’m wrong? Rosa! Am I wrong?”

“About what?” Rosa keeps her head down, holding a careful pose of not giving a shit.

“Isn’t it true that you never forget your first love?”

Rosa takes the knife from her pocket and flicks it open and closed. “For once, Jake, you're not wrong. That one is true.”


End file.
